As you make your way through the game you will learn that attacking is pretty
basic. You left click to attack and hold left to attack repeatedly. Additionally
you will use keys 1-0 to access special attacks. Use the right click to set off
the special attacks once you have selected them. Some of the special attacks
require charging where you will need to hold right click down until you are
fully charged and ready to unleash the attack. There are two areas for you to
store special attacks and select them. The first area has keyboard shortcut Z
and the second area has keyboard shortcut X. One thing RYL will demand from you
is the ability to use the keyboard shortcuts, so learn ‘em and love ‘em.
You should be aware though; leveling in this game is, most definitely, a
grind. For those of you that are unaware, “grinding” in a game like this means
you need to defeat extremely high numbers of small creatures. Why do I need to
attack creature after creature, for countless hours with no end in sight? Well
that’s obvious! You need the “ring of invisibility +2” or whatever new weapon is
available for purchase. Without the deaths of all those creatures you’ll never
earn what you need to advance. In fact, you will immediately come to terms with
this reality when you learn that you are dropped from all available quests
around level 2 or 3 only to be told, “come back at level 10” when you’ve
defeated the “lizard king” or some such creature. That’s right, although you do
a fair amount of learning early in the game through some quests initiated by
NPCs you will be largely left on your own. Your only instruction will be to do
endless battle with little creatures all over the beach area near the first
town.
RYL has a major selling point for those interested in Player vs Player
battles. Right on the front of the gamebox there is an advertisement for a $1
Million Grand Prize in their skill based tournament. The tournament is real and
it lasts for one year starting on July 1st, 2005. Each month twelve players are
selected and their names are displayed on the Fame Board at the RYL website.
These twelve players are ranked by level and fame and they participate in
semi-final battles. First in December, and then in April the sixty players
chosen will receive a free copy of the upcoming expansion and these sixty
players will be able to see who the best PVPers really are. A second cut will
occur and the top 30 from each of the two semi final tournaments will be flown
to E3 2006, May 10-12 in Los Angeles, CA (of course!) for the official RYL
Finals. There the players will do battle and determine who will win the title of
Emperor and receive the million dollar cash prize. Read the fine print though,
the million goes out in four $250,000 installments over a 4 year period. Still,
that’s one heck of a nice paycheck that someone will get to collect every year!
At the end of the day you will find that RYL:PotE can be both entertaining
and thrilling. The only question is – are you willing to spend the time to learn
how to make it that way?
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
70%. Risk Your Life: PotE can be entertaining and thrilling, but it’ll
take some work to make it that way. 
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